april is the cruellest month
by Ivory Muse
Summary: Dallas is not half as self-contained an apparatus as he'd like to think— and that Johnny kid is going to be his undoing.


_notes: if i write one more fic where a character dies and other characters lack healthy coping__ skills, take me out back and shoot me. this is just getting out of hand. _

* * *

Fuck, it's cold. After living in this arid little hellscape for five years, he figures his heat sense has become permanently skewed, but the December night really is bonechilling— reminds him of all the winter nights he spent in New York shivering under a bridge, and the thought makes him scowl and rub his holey-sweatshirted arms. Goddamn Buck said that he can't stay at his house anymore until he coughs up an exorbitant new rent, so then he punched him because he's seventeen and he can't keep his fists steady, so then they rolled around on the floor pounding each other's faces in— so now Dallas is still out on the street, except he's got a bloody nose and what might be a broken rib for company. Nobody disrespects Dallas Winston and gets away unscathed, but he knows he's going to crawl back tomorrow with his pockets full of Tim's money and his mouth full of crow— he needs _some_ damn place to live that's not court-ordered.

He's crashing in the abandoned lot with Johnny for tonight. Normally he'd sleep at the Curtises', which always promises an unlocked door, a colorful afghan on the sofa, and lurid dyed pancakes once he wakes up, but the Curtises' isn't the greatest place to bunk since the accident— Pony's barely managing to breathe in breathe out, Soda's mindlessly huffing weed after weed, Darry's throwing himself into jobs one, two, and three. Better that they're exposed and vulnerable but not _imposing_. He hates _imposing. _

"You okay, kid?" Dallas asks as he lights a Kool, trying hard to sound unconcerned and nonchalant. That's one heck of a shiner he's sporting, and he seems awful quiet even by his minimal standards, sitting on the gutted remnants of a couch with his knees hugged to his chest. Christ, Johnny shouldn't have to live this farce, nursing bruises and dodging two-by-fours whenever he approaches his parents' vicinity. Maybe Dallas gets what he deserves, a diamond-hard bastard who'd laugh in the Grim Reaper's face, but Johnny— he's never done anything bad to anyone. Johnny ought to have the American Dream family, like the Curtises... were.

"'M fine," Johnny tells the asphalt.

"Bullshit. Listen, do I have to play Twenty Questions here? Just spit it out already."

"It's not fair," Johnny snarls, slamming his fist down in uncharacteristic fury. "Mr. an' Mrs. Curtis were real good people. Real good. And now they're dead as dirt, when people like... well, you know..." He trails off and goes back to tracing loopy patterns in the cushion, because he doesn't need to finish that sentence.

"Life's a bitch," Dallas agrees; it probably doesn't comfort the younger boy in the slightest, but he's never claimed to be great shakes at comforting. He leans over to flick Johnny on the ear. "That's why you've gotta be twice as hard."

Johnny scoffs, "Is everything some kinda teachin' moment for you, Dal?" (He would knock out anybody else's lights if they'd said that to him, the whole gang included, but it's _Johnny_.) More softly, stretching his long limbs and tucking his hands beneath his head— "Mrs. C always let us stay with them. No questions asked. She got what shit was like 'round here."

"Mrs. C sure knew the score," Dallas says bitterly, the pain crashing over him in a sudden wave— takes his breath away, and he pretends to himself that he's sputtering on his cigarette. "Way more than my junkie momma, all right." (He hasn't uttered one _syllable_ about his fucked-up family in years, not about the father who hopes he'll end up dead in a gutter or the mother with soso many pinpricks covering her arms or the nutjob Jehovah's Witness cousins squatting in apocalypse foxholes. Too much vulnerability, too much _can't I just erase this, rewind this, make something better? _Johnny's maybe the only person he refuses to bullshit, these days.)

They share a look. It's not a nice look, and then they're quiet for a while.

(He stayed in school for that woman until the day she died, let her lecture him on keeping his nose clean and getting a real job and not terrorizing all the boys' homes he was foisted upon— and when she ruffled his hair or put a hand on his shoulder, he didn't flinch. She yelled loud enough to wake the dead whenever he got hauled in and threatened to tan his hide good if he didn't get his act together, and instead of telling her to fuck straight off the way he did with brown-nosing social workers, he lapped up the concern like a man dying of thirst— because when she said that she cared what he made of himself, she meant every damn word.

God, he hadn't expected it to hurt this much.

He really hadn't expected it to hurt this much.)

"... Don't wan' you to die, neither," Johnny finally mutters, already dozing off. When he's half-asleep and bleary-eyed, head lolled back with his throat revealed, it's not hard to forget that they're just a year apart; Dallas feels so older, at times, that the responsibility weighs down his bones. "Promise you're not gonna do somethin' crazy and die, Dally."

It's the Dally that breaks him. "Relax, Johnnycake," Dallas says with a slow laugh. He pulls off his sweatshirt and, very casually, drapes it over the kid— no sense in letting him catch sick. "I'll be 'round so long as you are."

(And, oh, how he keeps his promise.)


End file.
